Eatonville Restaurant To Close Barbecue Pit's Owner To Retire After 20 Years

September 22, 1985|By Dianne Selditch of The Sentinel Staff

EATONVILLE — It never looked fancy from the outside, the mission-style building with two red screen doors and ''Arkansas Pit Barbeque'' painted on the west wall, a gravel parking lot that floods after a good summer rain, the tall outdoor sign pointing to Ward & Williams Restaurant.

But when the sign in the window says ''Come in, we're open,'' town residents and knowledgeable out-of-towners can eat some of the best cooking around, thanks to Sarah Ward.

Until Saturday, that is, when Eatonville's main chef, now 72, closes her kitchen. For 20 years she has risen at 5 a.m. to prepare her specialties: salmon cakes at breakfast, fried just this side of crisp; baked ham for dinner that is so tender the diner sits up and takes notice; yams with just the right amount of glaze; and beef ribs that fall off the bone. But it is the biscuits and the corn muffins that folks talk about the most.

A fellow who works for Florida Power Corp. once asked for her recipe but she did not have one.

''I never measure nothing, I just cook . . . a little flour in my hand, a little baking powder. I guess that's a poor way to do it,'' she said.

On a recent morning she was at the counter stacking sets of silverware that she wraps in yellow paper napkins. Her hair, still black with just a few streaks of gray, is covered with a net. Her lower lip juts out when she talks and she looks at you squarely from behind her glasses with the same concentration she turns to her stove.

Age has shrunk her body somewhat, and now her back hunches between her shoulders. But she has not slowed down. According to long-time customers, she has always been slow. They know never to come by when they are in a hurry.

''It takes time to cook,'' she said. ''You want to fix it right.'' Her voice is reed-like, almost musical with a hint of a Southern accent.

She nodded toward the kitchen. ''There's a baked ham in the oven. It takes time to cook that.''

She told the story another way. ''Someone called this morning and ordered two bacon-and-egg sandwiches -- in 10 minutes. I couldn't do it in 10 minutes. Besides, I had people in here.''

People have been coming since 1963, when she married Attaway Ward and moved to Eatonville from her hometown in Winter Garden. He died a year later, leaving her the restaurant and a laundry.

The laundry business is closed, but she has run the restaurant single- handedly except for short intervals when schoolgirls would come by to cut vegetables. That gave her a little time, some years back, to get her high school diploma from the old Hungerford High School. Nowadays, a 13-year-old from Wymore Career Education Center comes by after school to clean up.

As much as she likes to cook, she hates to shop, Ward said, so she relies on her friend, Joe Williams, to get supplies at the wholesale houses when he comes into Eatonville from Mount Dora, where he teaches English. He also takes her out to eat.

''No, ma'am,'' she said, emphatically, ''I do not cook on the weekends.''

If she is not behind the counter, or beside the stove where her eyes alternate between the cooking food and the order form, she will be sitting at one the restaurant's four tables.

On the wall facing Kennedy Boulevard is a large plate glass window, and as she talks she looks out on the same two houses she has been looking at since she opened for business.

This day it is nearing 5:30 p.m. and she is tired.

She rests her elbows on a plastic tablecloth, the pretty kind, white and lacy, one of four she bought from K mart many years ago. She washes them every week, puts them in with the dish towels. They have held up, except for a couple of cigarette burns. A framed plaque, a commendation from the Eatonville Alliance of Businessmen, covers one of the burn marks.

Offering a glass of iced tea, she walks to the refrigerator, her body gently rolling, favoring her right side. She says she is pretty sure there will not be any more customers. Money is short on Wednesdays.

She is not thinking about the future, but ''so far the days can't come fast enough,'' she says, looking up at the wall calendar with big checks marking off the days. ''It's kind of exciting.''

She says her customers have a suggestion: '' 'Why don't you just serve dinner, you know, come over to the restaurant at 11?' '' But she has a few ideas of her own, and it is clear that this is not a woman who intends to idle away her retirement.

''So many people are surprised when I tell them on my next birthday I'll be 73,'' she says. ''That date's easy to remember. It's April 15, tax day.''

Although born in Minneola, she grew up in Winter Garden where ''they called me 'champ,' because I caught so much fish,'' she says. Suddenly she is not so tired anymore. She says she still fishes for blue gills, shell crackers and speckled perch, using worms and minnows, and prefers to boat fish because she likes to sit.